My limited federal government, more local control ‘Two Americas’ plan will never fly … but it would be interesting to see what could happen

By Terry Greenberg

America is broken and beyond repair.

Let that sink in a little.

Our national debt continues to rise. It’s embarrassing and just one of a bunch of things that don’t get fixed. Border security is another.

Why can’t we fix things?

Because we have two Americas and they cannot agree.

So let’s do something radical to fix it.

Let’s create … to some degree … two Americas.

Our Founding Fathers envisioned a small federal government with powerful states.

We have a massive federal government that is not governable.

So let’s go back 200-plus years ago and channel our inner-Founding Fathers.

Let’s cut the size of the federal government.

We need it for national defense, federal law enforcement, international relations, national parks and lands, interstate highways and some other issues mostly dealing with public safety, shared currency.

We do not need a federal Department of Education. Housing and Urban Development? Energy?

Can states run federal prisons?

Get rid of a chunk of the federal government and/or return more of what it does to the states.

Then … in cities that have a million people or more (the number can be adjusted), they can vote to become city-states and greatly self-govern themselves.

In other words … if people in New York want to tax themselves at 80 percent to pay for free college and health care for all … let them.

If those of us in Lubbock, Texas want less money taken for taxes (and fewer government services), that’s our choice.

America has become too big to truly be a government of the people.

There’s too much money and power at stake to really get things done.

So redistribute the money and power to the states and cities and let’s see what happens.

For instance, under the Greenberg Plan (sounds better than the Mann Act, eh?) … states or city-states can create their own gun laws. So what happens down the road if gun violence is worse in a large city with restrictive gun laws than places that fully value the Second Amendment?

For those of you who are getting sick to your stomach thinking you cannot be armed if you visit San Francisco or disgusted about New York City allowing late-term abortions … give me a better answer to fixing our national gridlock.

We have a bunch of people in this country who are on the left side of the aisle and a bunch of us on the right side.

It isn’t changing and things are not getting done.

The other option is a third political party … but I don’t see that realistically happening.

So we’ll all share a smaller federal government and pay fewer federal taxes.

We’ll have more control over what we pay to the state and our local governments.

The odds of the Greenberg Plan ever becoming reality are microscopic.

But something has to shake things up.

Terry Greenberg

Terry Greenberg is editor and business manager of Lubbock Lights. He worked in the newspaper industry for almost 40 years, 33 of those as editor of eight newspapers in five states. He was editor of the Avalanche-Journal from 2006-2015. He now runs his own media company, Greenberg Media Management. He is a native of Los Angeles and loves living in Lubbock, Texas.